*I just found this in my Drafts folder, written in November 2009! Might as well post it now. I decided not to watch the film after writing this, as the reviews were SO bad.*

I have just finished reading The Time Traveller’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. I have read it before but I recently decided to read it again, partly because I am sending it to a friend and wanted to refresh my memory of it, partly because I loved it so much but my memory of it was getting hazy and the film has been made and before I rent the dvd I wanted to make the book firm in my mind to protect it from being ruined by seeing the film (the books are always better than the films, eh? But the film version can erase our memories of the book). Also I was listening to the BBC Ouch! podcast and they mentioned how it is basically a book about living with disability. Although I had got that the first time, I have been thinking about disability a lot more since I first read it and wanted to read it with that in mind…

Well, even though I had read it before it did not dilute the enjoyment, awe or emotional response this time around. I love this book!

I am not going to talk about it and spoil it for people who have not read it yet (including the friend I have promised it to, who will read this) but I would like to say that it deals with issues of living in a differently-abled body which behaves in unpredictable and unconventional ways (er, time travelling! As Ouch! said, it makes you wonder what will the disabilities of the future be?) and this is presented as a genetic condition. The book focusses on him living with this condition, trying to control his body, trying to be cured, effects on reproduction and relationships.

I really liked the way that his wife’s experience was so sensitively written. As anyone living with/caring for someone with an impairment, she experiences the compromises she has to make by association, how almost everything in their shared life is dominated by his condition, how she also has a different relationship to time and misses out on a lot of normal life experiences due to being in that relationship. Time is experienced differently by them both, not just because they are affected by time travel, but also due to the limitations brought upon them by his medical condition: living with disability. They both live for the good bits even if they are still compromised and always affected by it. There is a sense for him of not being entirely present in the present and feeling he is missing out on life, by thinking about other alternate times. This is something that I can relate to as someone with chronic illness who occasionally wastes time thinking about what I could be doing if I was better, rather than making the most of and appreciating what I am doing/can do now.

More than this, the universal themes of aging, embodiment, death, love, grief and loss are so movingly written I defy anyone not to identify with something in this book. Also a major theme is waiting. Waiting for better times, waiting for love, waiting for things to make sense. Who isn’t waiting for something?